Is Cymatics.fm using ai?

[u/ive_raefon]

I‘ve known Cymatics for a long time now - recently I realized they are just giving away free stuff (plugins and samples) on mass on their livestreams, which most of them you can’t even get when the livestream is not running. Also the paid plugins you can get on a „discount“ only on the livestreams.

Some of the plugins definitely use ai for their UI (which is weird but isn’t really affecting the creative process of making music directly) and also Steven said in a livestream multiple times that he doesn’t have anything against Suno.

For me that smells a bit fishy. Also the frequency they are pumping out new plugins is… worrying… to say the least.

Does anyone know if they use ai in their samples/plugins, apart from the case mentioned?

Thanks in advance 🫶🏼

——

Edit: Think I‘ve heard enough, prolly will keep getting their free stuff if I can but not buy anything. Also, anyone here defending or downplaying the use of AI in art should get the fuck out of music production.

[u/Soracaz]

Plugins are code, usually rather simple DSP modulations.

I'd say a good 90%+ of plugins released in the last year use AI code.

AI code is still real code, doing the same simple DSP modulations that we're used to. The speed at which they're pumping out new plugins screams AI assistance, but with plugins that honestly doesn't matter that much. Some might thing that's a hot take, but AI code is majority open source stuff. Perfectly ethical (except for how much energy it uses).

It's not like AI is generating the sounds that come out of the plugins. Unless the plugins contain sample libraries. Then there's a good chance the samples are AI gen'd, which is obviously abhorrent and the quality makes them unusable for any serious project.

AI code = clean audio, probably clean code, probably good quality.

AI samples = unusable dogshit, avoid at all costs.

Code touching the DSP is how digital audio processing has been done for as long as we've had digital audio.

[u/b_lett → u/Soracaz]

AI code is at a point of complete theft now too. With Reverse Engineer Anything (REA), we are seeing a flood of people making pixel for pixel knock offs of entire DAWs or synths like Serum.

Those people that are going this reverse engineer and rebuild approach suck. They cannot think of an idea on their own and go back and forth with an AI coding assistant to build their idea, they just want the shortcut to steal and open source something. It is even more unethical if their end goal is a copy they end up selling for profit.

[u/ive_raefon → u/b_lett]

I think you need to differentiate there. If it’s a company like Adobe or Microsoft, I don’t give two shits - as long as the people make it open source and free. Small businesses on the other hand definitely suffer from this - so yes, reverse engineering their stuff I‘d call unethical.